


Purple Sage

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Series: Orville Peck: the outtakes [4]
Category: Country Music RPF, Orville Peck - Fandom
Genre: 1910s, Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Reno - Freeform, True Love, rodeo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23737834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: Behind the Mask: Reno, 1919, and Orville Peck takes a trip down memory lane.
Relationships: Orville Peck/Original Character
Series: Orville Peck: the outtakes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1709713
Kudos: 8





	Purple Sage

"It takes a man to wear a frock like that," Dellwood says. 

He's looking at a walking dress of pink satin ruffles and blonde Versailles lace, with matching parasol, price twenty-five guineas, which translates to ten bushels of seed corn or a truck that starts every darn time whatever the weather. Dellwood's eyebrows are tucked down over the brow of his nose, which is endearingly obvious if those eyebrows, as Dellwood's, resemble dark and woolly caterpillars set above his long, quixotic face. He evinces just as much concentration as he would do sizing up a prize Hereford bull.

Orville feels his love for this man like a stab to the heart. It's hopeless. It always has been. He says, "Yup. That's the cowboy aesthetic. Five o'clock in the morning, pink satin rucked up to the hips, feed bucket in one hand and pitchfork in the other."

One of Dellwood's eyebrows curls up at the corner. He says, "I like the sound of that rucked up to the hips."

Orville's ears are malfunctioning. He shakes his head. Dellwood, his Dellwood, who has never once, so far as Orville knows, even glanced across the schoolroom at Sarah-Jane Rattery's bouncing curls and freckled cleavage, or Mercedes Ruiz' sparkling dark eyes and her acid wit. Dellwood, unmoved as a clod of mud in his work overalls and boots - he looks sideways through the slits of the mask, and Dellwood looks perfectly innocent, hands in his pockets, window-shopping, a rawhide cowboy on his yearly visit to the big city. 

Dellwood always did have the knack of looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. It was always Orville who got the whupping, but then he also got Dellwood smuggling him peppermint candy and their precious, shared stash of torn-out funnies.

"You heard me," says Dellwood. He says, "Mrs Pritchard at Four Circle ain't ever seen out of a silk negligee. Pastor's wife feeds the chickens in red-heeled booties, and Pastor's built her a wooden walkway to drum them off of. I don't see as this un's any different."

"Those are... not words I expected to hear come out of your mouth, Dellwood Earl D'Orly," says Orville.

"For a free-thinkin' man, Orville Peck, you sure have a lot of assumptions," says Dellwood. "I ain't blaming you for that. I know as it's been a while since you sat still and saw the sunset." 

"I see the sunset!" Orville says. And he does, mostly, because the sun goes down every night, but it's hard to see the stars behind the arc lights on stage. If the rodeo's packing up, he'll notice right enough, racing to get the tents down before the dark sets in. 

Dellwood watches the sunset from the wrap-round porch on the ranch, light like a stained glass window right across the sky, velvet dark, stars like pieces of heaven. There's never been a sky as big as the one seen from Dellwood's ma's rocking chairs. A boy can feel very small, under that sky, but part of something, too, quiet and still. The sunset doesn't care who Orville is, or what he's wearing, or who he dreams about; it's inconceivably greater than him.

In that moment, Orville yearns for the porch. The scent of sage, and the patchwork rugs, the lantern, and Dellwood picking at his guitar for all he can't hardly hold a tune, and the creak of the rocker, and the stars. Then he remembers the cage of what people thought, and the wounds of what people said, and his own bleeding heart. 

"I see the sunset every night," he says, defiant. "When the lights go up on stage."

"I guess you do," says Dellwood. "Standing up there. I don't know how you do it, Orville. All them folks wanting, and you giving it up to them, time after time. All those stories."

Which makes Orville ashamed of himself, because there's Dellwood, doing his very best to understand Orville, and there's Orville, petulant and hurting over something fifteen years gone and not Dellwood's fault in the first place. He knocks his shoulder against Dellwood's to say sorry, which is as close as he'll let himself be in public in cowboy country.

Dellwood hugs him close and tight, ruffles his hair, and plants a smacker on his neck. Orville wriggles and giggles, until his mask falls over his eyes, fringe in his mouth, strings round his ears. He's broader in the shoulders and snakier around the hips, but Dellwood's two inches taller and solid as a fencepost. Dellwood doesn't care. 

"There you are," says Dellwood, comfortable and kind. He's always been kind, soft-hearted, sweet as peppermint candy, even when Orville can't hardly draw breath because _someone_ has his fingers diddling away at the exact ticklish spot under his ribs. "Better?"

"Lemme go!" Orville squeaks. And then Dellwood does, and it's the last thing Orville wants. He adjusts everything back into place, puffing at the fringe to straighten it out, catches a glimpse of Dellwood's bright, interested eyes, and ducks under the brim of his hat. It was a mistake, dropping the letter into that post-box back in Sioux Falls, when the rodeo comes around regular as clockwork, Dellwood knew that, they'd managed fine last year meeting up by accident, and the year before.... _Dear Dell...your pal, Orville Peck..._

"Wait here," says Dellwood, "I gotta list from Ma. I'll be two minutes." 

Which leaves Orville cooling his heels on the sidewalk while Dellwood goes shopping, just at the moment when he was going to make his excuses, which Dellwood maybe knows. Two minutes later he thinks better of it, as Dellwood also maybe knows, and just when the stares are starting to irk him - he oughta have flyers in his pockets, ' _Orville Peck, show tonight at nine_ ' but he's all out, confounded by - Dellwood comes out of the store with a well-wrapped package and a look like a satisfied bear. If a bear had Dellwood's lanky, lackadaisical frame and his dear, familiar face. "I hear as there's a rodeo in town," Dellwood says. "You wanna take a look?"

And the thing is - the thing is that Orville's forgotten. He's part of the rodeo. Part of the silk and sawdust magic, rocking up with tents and horse trailers and cotton-candy carts, hustling for space and livestock and feed, setting up his shared stage night after night. Orville didn't run away, he ran towards, and he's never regretted his choices, but he ran towards freedom and adventure, not towards his blistered fingers and his shared trailer and beans for supper night after night, because Orville can't cook and Mary-Jane don't care to. But tonight, he hangs over the rail with Dellwood, and forgets he's part of the show. He shouts himself raw for the handsome Mexican with the calico pony and the ringer from Hawaii on the borrowed horse, clings white-knuckled to the rail when Tim Venables gets himself tangled in the harness, and admires Indigo Jones in his clown's costume all over again, because if ever there was a rodeo hero it's Indigo. He takes Dellwood down to the backside of the show, so they can sit on hay-bales and pretend to be the kids they once were, eating hot dogs and watching the horses go by, and the men who ride them. 

"Hey there, sweetheart," says Mary-Jane. She's got her best jacket on, and Star's tricked-out harness is freshly polished, so they both look as pretty as paint.

"My best girls!" says Orville, so happy to see them, and he gets up so that Star can whuffle at his fringe and stick her nose down his shirt. His very own pony. He says, "Dellwood, you gotta meet Star, she's the greatest!"

"Howdy," says Dellwood. 

"And this is M-J!" says Orville. 

"Howdy, ma'am," says Dellwood.

Mary-Jane says, "It ain't that, Dellwood D'Orly. Glad to meet ya. I heard a lot."

"Likewise," says Dellwood, and sticks his hand out like the gentleman he is, not the hand he's been petting Star with, and Mary-Jane shakes. "Peck's his own man," Dellwood says. 

"Ha!" says Mary-Jane. She looks Dellwood up and down, which is honest, because Dellwood's worth the time. "Well," she says, "Well, Orville, if I was you, which I ain't, I'd rope that down double-quick and stick a brand on it. No offence."

"None taken," says Dellwood.

Orville straightens his hat, which is inexplicably askew, kicks the beer bottles behind the hay bale, and takes a good hold of Dellwood, because. He says, "I don't do tie-down, M-J."

"Yeah, yeah," says Mary-Jane. She looks at Orville's hand, holding tight, and then at Dellwood. "I gotta get going, we're on in five." She pulls a face, because Mary-Jane can ride anything with four legs, and it rankles that they won't let her ride the bulls, except in New York State, where anything goes. She does trick-rides instead, because Star's that pretty, and if there's anyone to race against she does barrel-races and jumps on her own pinto, Clara. "He's got a show at nine. You might want to get some food in him."

"Ah, darn it," says Dellwood. "Orville."

"I know," says Orville, and lets go of most of that nice loose happiness he's been building on. He says, "Break a leg, M-J," and gives Star one last pat, and then he says, "C'mon, then. I got coffee in the trailer," which is not an invitation he makes on the regular. Yet, for all he's not used to anyone in his space, it's Dellwood, so when it's not easy it's funny. He's never told Dellwood about Richmond, nor about what it's like to sail across the Atlantic and back again, and Dellwood's never thought to mention that town's three sizes bigger than it used to be, with a theatre and a bookstore, and a club for radical whigs with a women's library, and one for prohibitionists and one for hop growers. There's a yearly stampede, and a festival for pies and patchwork, and an autumn corn celebration with a king and queen. Dellwood's niece was last year's king, which makes Orville think about how many years it's been since he was home because last time he checked Dellwood's little brother wasn't married. 

"That's what you get?" says Dellwood, finishing up the last of his beans.

"Yeah?" says Orville, scraping the last of his back into the pan.

"Fifteen years I been working on _All persons born or naturalized_ being equal in life and liberty," says Dellwood, "Irrespective of what colour of skin or if'n they've got a johnson or not or what kind of titles they like to give themselves, not to mention the wearing of frocks. And what you notice is that Kenny's babies grew up?"

Orville back-tracks. He says, "Dell." 

Dellwood said, "I wasn't going nowhere, Orville Peck, so I made a place you could come home to, when and if. Ain't you meant to be dressing up?"

"We gotta talk about this," says Orville, breathless. He drags his shirt over his head and Dellwood passes him the silk one with the butterflies. "How am I supposed to notice when you don't tell me?" He looks around, panicking: Dellwood passes him the scarlet mask, same as the butterflies, and then turns his back. Orville fumbles the strings, cusses, says, "Dell, please." He's been tying his own masks for years. 

"Get your fingers out the way," says Dellwood. "I ain't telling you to come home. That's up to you. I ain't telling to stop singing, neither. That'd be a crime. I seen... I been to a few shows. I see you. I'm just saying you got a place."

"Dell," Orville says. He's got Dellwood's fingers in his. He does not want to let go. 

"Yup," says Dellwood. "That too." 

Then he flicks Orville on the nose, and hands him his guitar.


End file.
